An important interview series at Jadaliyya with one of the leading scholars in Islamic studies, Wael Hallaq. Discussions on the inability or lack of interest of Western and Islamic scholars to confront one another in dialogue and the uncritical adoption of hegemonic Western liberalist discourse.

In A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth writes with affection of a placid India‘s first general election in 1951, and the egalitarian spirit it momentarily bestowed on an electorate deeply riven by class and caste: “the great washed and unwashed public, sceptical and gullible”, but all “endowed with universal adult suffrage”.

Paris is about to lose its first Muslim mayor. Dr. Arjumand Hashmi, a prominent cardiologist selected by his Paris City Council peers to be mayor in 2011, confirmed Wednesday that he won’t seek the mayor’s post next Monday.

When she lived near Israel, in the predominantly Muslim country of Jordan, Katie Al-Akhras observed that much of the conflict between people of Islamic and Jewish faiths resulted from divisions “bred” into children of both faiths.

The problem with discussing Sharia law in the U.S is that very few people seem to know what they are talking about, as Dr. Sherman Jackson, one of the foremost experts on Islamic law in the U.S., points out. Myths about “creeping Sharia” and the take-over of Islamic law abound.